Woodside’s new Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, or STEM building is coming to life as the August 2017 opening date draws near.

The new building will have several new classrooms, such as a chemistry and engineering lab, along with several other traditional classrooms. Jill Baumgartel, a member of the building committee, weighs in on the purpose of the new building.

“It’s a two story building,” stated Baumgartel. “On the bottom, you’re going to have a full chem suite, which will be a chemistry laboratory and a classroom. Then on the other side of the bottom floor will be robotics/engineering… And then the top floor will be five classrooms,… probably just math.”

Baumgartel, an AS chemistry teacher, and the science department chair, will be moving into the new Chemistry lab starting next year.

“I’ll [Baumgartel] be in the Chem suite, and Mr. Shannon and Ms. Yang will be in the robotics/engineering,” stated Baumgartel.

The J-Wing has been in the making since 2014, when a Measure A Bond was approved by district voters. Woodside High School Principal Diane Burbank outlines the timeline of the building, from approval to completion, in an interview with the Woodside World.

Burbank said, “This building is a 17 million dollar building, and is paid for by the bond measure that the district voters approved… to improve the school in June of 2014.”

After the bond was approved, the planning stage of the project began.

“It took us a year to design and figure out what we were going to do,” said Burbank.

Then came the actual construction of the building, the phase the project is currently in now. Construction started at the end of the school year in 2016.

“May of 2016 is when we broke ground,” stated Burbank. “We broke ground before graduation, tore up the softball field, removed one of the tennis courts and started the dirt work that had to happen… now we’re going to have instruction starting in it in August of 2017.”

The J-Wing is not the only improvement happening around campus. Bradley Field (the football field) was recently renovated and new piping is going into the school throughout this upcoming summer.

Burbank stated, “[The] A, B, C, and D Wings don’t have enough water to fight a significant fire on campus, so they’re replacing our water lines.”

The project is so big that the school will be closed summer 2017.

“During the summer,” Baumgartel stated. “The school’s going to be closed because we have so many construction projects going on.”

The school may be going through many major improvements, but so far the construction is slated to be finished by the start of the 2017-2018 school year.

Baumgartel stated, “We will be online for… August 17th; students will be coming into the new building, it’s going to be awesome.”